I was very impressed with the Central Ohio girls 4 X 800 District times - Hilliard Davidson (9:06), Gahanna (9:07) Westerville Central (9:08), Granville (9:11) and Thomas Worthington (9:14). That will be a great race to watch coming up! Tough to see any of those teams with that quality of time not compete at State.

You are correct, for sure. It is also sad that there will be individual runners from those same schools that will not make it out of the Pick North Regional despite having some of the best times in the State.

You are correct, for sure. It is also sad that there will be individual runners from those same schools that will not make it out of the Pick North Regional despite having some of the best times in the State.

In addition to the top 4 from each regional qualifying to the state meet, the OHSAA is taking the 2 fastest regional times not in the top 4 for all running events.

Perhaps the OHSAA should work even harder to make it a priority to identify the true 5th best performer in each event.

The results were from all district meets headed to Pickerington North Regional.
So these 5 teams could be the five best in the region not district.

I knew that.

Just tired of the same batch of whining every year. Stacked events happen in the tournament every year.

The system is meant to do 2 things: 1) provide opportunity for kids from all corners of the state to be represented at the state meet and 2) identify the state champion. The system accomplishes those 2 objectives extremely well. The system is not meant to identify the 5th best anything in the state, nor should it be designed to meet that objective if it comes at the expense of the other objectives.

A person is allowed to lose to as many as 3 others in his or her event and can still advance to the next level of the tournament. That seems more than fair to me. It's a track meet, not a time trial festival.

Life is filled with being forced to watch those that don't exactly measure up to an objective standard being rewarded above those that do.

I have noticed that SW teams tend to explode when they get to the state meet while Central teams at times peak at Region. Not all the time but there are programs that appear to do a really good job of peaking their atheletes for the most important meet. You may see this happen this year with 5 very good teams in the central reagion fighting over 4 spots while SW teams can cruise and build to a state meet peak strategy.

Life is filled with being forced to watch those that don't exactly measure up to an objective standard being rewarded above those that do.

I have noticed that SW teams tend to explode when they get to the state meet while Central teams at times peak at Region. Not all the time but there are programs that appear to do a really good job of peaking their atheletes for the most important meet. You may see this happen this year with 5 very good teams in the central reagion fighting over 4 spots while SW teams can cruise and build to a state meet peak strategy.

I sort of agree with this, in the 4x800 and on the girls side only, over the past few years. But my honest assessment of it has been exactly what you cite, that the need to run their fastest in order just get out leaves some teams flat the next week. If you look at all events in recent years in D1 the Pickerington regional has clearly been the strongest of the three regions.

I'm sure the central teams have struggled in certain events, just like teams from any region have. However, if you look at the scoring over the past few years--the central region has been fairly dominant on both the boys and girls side.